Given the central nature of maps

Given the central nature of maps in War for the Atlas, the feature itself involved a fantastic deal of time in evolution. It has been a work in progress over the course of the poe currency last growth, but also throughout the life span of PoE itself. The design of this system is driven by two design goals: Random levels are crucial and "everywhere can be a functional end-game". Most significantly, GGG looked in issues impacting the ARPG genre generally and how it intended to address the boredom That Lots of players find at end game:

The significant issue that we faced when the end-game was in the state was staleness of the final locations. Players who desired to discover the best items and earn the most experience were forced to repeat the exact same few areas over and over. While the arbitrary levels were doing a great deal of work, we had a lot more variety. In the 0.8.6 patch, we included a special end-game known as the Maelstrom of Chaos. This is a set of consecutive areas that tapered up in difficulty level, together with random critters and random tilesets (from a selection of eight).

While this improved the boredom problem of people playing the very same areas repeatedly, it created a totally new problem that we hadn't seen before: articles difficulty entitlement. It was quite frustrating, observing people intentionally sabotage their own progression and then getting mad about it. Eventually we realised the fact: the game design was at fault and had to change. We had to find a system that created players feel good about playing at the ideal level for their progression.

Concept Art in War for the Atlas

One of the most intriguing thing for a lot of cheap poe currencypoe trade fans is to find that the concept art that developers start with and also to compare it to how it finally ends up when launched. The PoE site has another series of images from the art team to show off things which can be found at Atlas Supporter Packs, Elder layout and special items. You can check it out here.